


Waiting Room

by glorious_spoon



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Aging, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Future Fic, Gen, Heart Attacks, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 10:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8202025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: When Daniel ends up in the hospital, Peggy and Jack comfort each other.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the 'surgery' square on my H/C Bingo card, and inspired by [this prompt](https://agentcarterliveson.tumblr.com/post/151226887560/inspirational-sunday#notes).

Peggy is on the phone when he lets himself into the New Jersey townhouse. From two rooms away, he can’t quite make out what she’s saying, but the tone is Agent Carter at her most briskly efficient, which means that the situation is exactly as bad as he figured but not quite as bad as he feared. He was half-expecting to land in Newark to the news that Daniel’s big, dumb, stubborn heart actually stopped for good, and he’s been riding a wave of low-level panic all the way from eastern Europe.

Jack shuts the door behind him quietly, folds his umbrella, and sets his suitcase down against the wall. A small gray cat emerges from the kitchen entrance to peer at him as he toes his loafers off. He holds a finger up to his lips, and the cat gives him a disdainful look and flops down on the welcome mat to lick its feet.

“Well, hello to you too,” he mutters, and makes his way down the hallway.

Peggy is in the kitchen, back to the door, phone pressed to her ear. One hand is on her hip, the other is tugging at the coiled cord. Despite the fact that he’s pretty sure she hasn’t slept a wink in the past twenty-four hours, her silvering hair is perfectly coiffed, her clothing neat.

“Don’t be ridiculous, darling,” she’s saying. “His surgery is in two hours, there’s no way you could possibly get here in time anyway. You know your father would never forgive himself if— Edward, I’m quite serious. There’s no need to reschedule it. I’ll call you straightaway as soon as there’s news. Now, if…”

She trails off as she turns and spots Jack standing in the doorway. She blinks at him for a moment, and he shoves his hands in his pockets, gives her half a smile.

Tinnily, over the phone, he can hear Edward say, _“Mom? Mom, are you still there?”_

Peggy starts. “Yes, I’m here. I’m sorry. I’ve got to go, darling.” She pauses for a moment, listening, then says, “Yes, of course I’ll tell him. I love you, too. Goodbye.”

She hangs up the receiver and crosses the room in two long strides to wrap Jack into a tight hug. “Jack, what on earth are you doing here? I spoke to your secretary, and she wasn’t even sure she’d be able to get you a message in time.”

“Yeah, well, negotiations were shorter than we were expecting. How is he?”

Peggy steps back, pushes her hair out of her face, and gives him a bright smile that he doesn’t buy in the least. “Resting, for now. I spent the night at the hospital, but he—well, I needed to get a change of clothes and call the children.”

Jack smiles. “He kicked you out, huh?”

She sniffs. “He told me to go home and get some sleep. As if _that_ was likely.”

“Well, at least somebody has some common sense. You heading back to the hospital?”

“Yes, of course,” Peggy says. “He has a coronary bypass surgery scheduled for later this morning, and— well. Are you coming?”

“Nah, I just spent fifteen hours on a plane to sit in your house and keep your cat company,” Jack retorts, without rancor. “Of course I’m coming.”

Peggy laughs. Like the smile, it’s too bright, too sharp, brittle around the edges. Jack doesn’t comment on it.

“My car’s parked out front,” he says instead. “You look like hell; I’ll give you a ride.”

Peggy doesn’t put up even a token argument, and it’s that, more than anything, that tells him exactly how serious the situation is.

* * *

Daniel looks oddly shrunken in his hospital bed, gray-faced and wan. Jack isn’t used to thinking of any of them as old, but right now, Daniel looks it. His hair is a halo of iron-gray curls against the white hospital pillow; his eyes are closed, and the lines around them look like they were carved with a knife.

Jack hangs back in the doorway while Peggy sits down next to the bed, reaches for Daniel’s hand, and says, in a perfectly normal voice, “Really, Daniel, sleeping at a time like this?”

“Just resting my eyes,” Daniel mumbles, and opens them. “You talk to the kids?”

“Of course. Colette caught an early flight; she’ll be here in a few hours. Edward wanted to cancel his thesis defense—”

“I hope you told him not to,” Daniel says sharply, looking suddenly more alert.

Peggy’s lips tighten. “Of course I did. Or rather, I told him you wouldn’t want him to.”

“Good.”

“He wasn’t happy about it.”

“Too bad,” Daniel says. “He’s been working on that thing for the past five years of his life—”

“—and you’re his father. He’s worried about you.” Peggy smooths Daniel’s unruly curls back from his forehead. It’s a tender, intimate gesture, and Jack thinks about stepping back out of the room to give the two of them some privacy. Before he can, though, Peggy glances up at him and adds, “At any rate, you have a guest.”

“What? Who—” With a visible effort, Daniel lifts his head and peers toward the doorway. “Jack? What are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you too, Sousa,” Jack drawls, stepping into the room. “You look like something the cat dragged in.”

“I just had a heart attack. What’s your excuse?”

“Clean living. Really takes it out of a guy.”

Daniel snorts. “Yeah, I’ll bet. I thought you were in Czechoslovakia.”

“I _was._ Then I get this phone call, middle of the night…”

His secretary took the call, actually, so he can’t say for himself just what a state Peggy was in when she made it, but the fact that Lois, a stone-cold battle-axe of a woman with all the gentle sensitivity of a cantankerous bulldog, thought it was dire enough to actually pass the message on is...telling.

God, she must have been in a panic. There’s no sign of it now, but Peggy perfected her poker face long before she was Director Carter, terror of the Security Council, and there’s a decreasing number of people who’ve ever seen her with her mask off. He suspects that Daniel and the kids are the only people left who regularly get to see the woman underneath.

Kinda makes him sad sometimes, but hey, in this life, they all make sacrifices.

“Anyway, I was glad for an excuse to get out of there. Not that New Jersey in March is really any better.”

“I’m touched,” Daniel says dryly, looking not the least bit fooled.

“Daniel, has the doctor been in?” Peggy asks. “I meant to ask…”

“Yeah, about ten minutes before you got here. They should be in pretty soon to prep me. Hey.” Daniel reaches for her hand, and Peggy lets him take it, her face masklike. “I’ll be okay. I promise.”

“Of course you will,” she says immediately.

Before Daniel can answer, there’s a light knock on the doorframe, and a nurse pokes her head in. “They’re almost ready for you, Mr. Sousa. I just have a few things to go over with you and Mrs. Sousa first…” Her voice trails off, and she looks at Jack with an expression of polite inquiry.

“I’ll wait outside,” he says, hooking a thumb over his shoulder, and beats a quick retreat.

It’s a few minutes later when Peggy steps out of the room, and a couple of orderlies go in. Jack glances at her, but she’s staring steadfastly at the opposite wall. It’s not until they roll Daniel’s bed out that she moves, leans over him for a quick kiss on the lips, whispers, just loud enough that Jack can hear it, “You’ll be fine.”

“Of course I will,” Daniel says, reaching up to cup her cheek for a moment before letting his hand drop. Peggy straightens, steps back, and he glances at Jack. “Jack—”

“Good luck,” Jack says.

Daniel’s smile crinkles the corners of his eyes. “Thanks.”

And then they’re rolling him away down the hall toward the operating room. The double doors swing shut behind him, and he’s gone.

Peggy sways on her feet, but she steadies herself before Jack can reach for her, turns her smile on him. “There’s a waiting area up ahead, and I believe a cafeteria. I’m famished, and you must be as well. Airplane food is ghastly.”

“Peggy—”

“Come on, then,” she says, and starts down the hall. Jack sighs and falls into step beside her.

“What time does Colette’s flight get in?” he asks, as they make their way to a bright, open waiting area. There are tall windows overlooking a scintillating view of muddy slush and highway construction, but the chairs look comfortable, and there’s some kind of snack bar at the far end of the room--cold sandwiches, mostly, it looks like. Coffee, probably. Hopefully.

“Not until two.”

“And how long—?”

“They said that the procedure should take approximately four hours, if all goes well.”

There are a few clusters of anxious-looking people scattered around, but it’s not especially crowded. Peggy chooses a corner chair to set her bag down on, but doesn’t sit. She looks like she has a live wire thrumming through her: all wound up and nothing to do with all the excess adrenaline. Peggy’s always been better at problems that she can punch in the face. Waiting quietly goes against her nature.

“Should we expect for everything to go well?”

It’s the wrong thing to say, he knows that even before he finishes speaking. The firm line of Peggy’s mouth trembles a little. “Honestly, Jack, I don’t know. I—we didn’t even know it was a problem. He’s had no trouble with his heart, it came out of nowhere, he just… he just collapsed, and if I hadn’t been there…”

She shudders, and doesn’t finish the sentence. Jack can’t blame her.

“Hey,” he says gently. They’ve learned to be gentle with each other, something they were never much good at when they were young. “Forget I asked. You want some coffee? Tea?”

“Tea, please,” Peggy says, looking relieved. “Thank you.”

The selection at the little cafeteria isn’t much better than the mess hall back on base, but they do at least have tea… in aged-looking bags with lukewarm water.

Oh, well. Beggars can’t be choosers, and he doubts that Peggy’s in any state to even notice what she’s drinking right now. For himself, he pours a cup of sludgy-looking coffee that’s probably been sitting out since yesterday morning, nabs a few pre-wrapped pastries, pays the bored-looking girl at the counter and crosses back over to where Peggy is waiting.

She’s sitting down now, curled in on herself, hands wrapped around the points of her knees, but she straightens when Jack sits down next to her, takes the tea he hands her.

“Thank you.”

“Anytime.” He hesitates, then asks, “How are you holding up?”

“I suppose I always thought I might end up sitting in a hospital waiting room, praying for him to pull through,” she says slowly, staring down into the depths of her Styrofoam mug. “I just thought it would be the Russians, or Hydra, or some godawful accident with experimental technology, not—”

Not a sixty-two-year-old man’s body failing him in a perfectly ordinary way. It seems unthinkable that after everything they’ve survived, this could be the thing to do him in.

They really are all getting old, aren’t they? Normal people start thinking about retiring at this age. People like them, though… he always figured they’d die in the saddle. It’s a shock, in some ways, to have lived long enough for this to even be a concern.

“But he’ll be fine,” Peggy adds, with fierce resolve.

“Yeah,” Jack says. “He still owes me fifty dollars from that last poker game back in November, and I intend to collect.”

Peggy lets out a wet-sounding little laugh. “Well, it’s good to know you have your priorities in order.”

“I do what I can.” He lifts his arm slightly, unsure whether or not she’ll take the invitation, but after a long moment, she leans against him with a sigh, tucking her face against his shoulder. He wraps his arm around her and presses his cheek to her hair, breathing in the familiar smell of her perfume. Chanel No. 5, the same scent she’s worn for decades.

Her shoulders are shaking slightly, and when she pulls away a long time later, the front of his shirt is damp.

After all this time, he knows better than to mention it.


End file.
